Archive for July, 2009

One of the best-known and flamboyant London showmen who pitched up at Petticoat Lane market every Sunday wasn’t Alan Sugar, who started his business career as a stall-holder at the famous East End market, but a black racing-tipster who grandly called himself Ras Prince Monolulu. In fact, from the 1920s until he died in 1965, and unless Paul Robeson was visiting the country, he was probably the most famous black person in Britain.

Petticoat Lane market has, in one form or another, existed in the East End for hundreds of years. The actual road that was called Petticoat Lane had its name changed to Middlesex Street in the 1830s – the word ‘petticoat’ was deemed a little unsavoury for the young Queen Victoria – but the original name has stuck to mean the general area.

Petticoat Lane Market in 1946

Petticoat Lane, 1938

Monolulu on Derby day in 1954

Monolulu usually wore an ostentatious head-dress of ostrich feathers, a multi-coloured cloak and gaiters, a huge scarf wrapped around his waist and was hardly ever without his huge shooting stick-cum-umbrella. Of course anybody who was considered remotely amusing in those days had to have a catch-phrase and Monolulu’s, heard by everyone at Petticoat Lane and race-courses around the country, was:

“I Gotta Horse, I Gotta Horse’.

Monolulu was born Peter Carl McKay in 1881 and was originally from an island called St Croix, now part of the US Virgin Islands in the West Indies. He arrived in Britain in 1902 and after a year of mostly menial work he managed to join the chorus of the first all-black West End musical show called In Dahomey.

In Dahomey was initially staged on Broadway to limited success and after just 53 performances it was transferred to London’s Shaftesbury Theatre. The British public had literally seen nothing like it and the show became a huge sensation. The success was capped by a command performance celebrating the birthday of the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace, where it was heralded as “the most popular musical show in London.”

The musical featured an elaborate version of the African-American minstrel dance called the ‘Cakewalk’ and featured several hit songs as well as making stars in London of the principal actors.

Aida Overton Walker. Photograph by Cavendish Morton in London 1903

George W Walker in 'In Dahomey' 1903

George W. Walker and Bert A. Williams

After In Dahomey came to an end there wasn’t much work for black musical actors in London (to say the least) and Monolulu travelled Europe as a fortune teller, violinist, singer, lion tamer and even a ‘cannibal’ in a travelling roadshow. He was in Germany when the first world war broke out and he found himself in a German Internment camp called Ruhleben (which, incidentally was a former race course) near Berlin for the duration of the war.

The Ruhleben Internment camp during the First world war.

After he returned to England, he began work for an Irish tipster but quickly went solo and took to shouting “I gotta horse” after seeing the religious revivalist Gypsy Daniels shouting “I’ve got heaven” to attract his crowds.

An almost Hendrixian Monolulu at Epsom on Derby day 1923

Epsom, 1932

In 1920 Monolulu reputedly won £8,000 on the Derby when he put all his money on an unfancied horse called Spion Kop. It was a vast sum of money at the time and from that moment on he became a tipster for ever more. When anyone bought a tip from him (at Epsom at the height of his fame he would charge ten shillings) he’d hand over a sealed envelope inside of which was the name of the horse written with careful handwriting on a piece of paper. He’d lean over to the punter and whisper:

“If you tell anyone, the horse will lose”.

It seemed that someone always told someone because Monolulu’s horse nearly always lost. Although no one ever complained.

Prince Monolulu at the Epsom races in 1927

Ras Prince Monolulu after his marriage to the actress Nellie Adkins in 1931

Monolulu at the Queen's coronation 1953

Monolulu in 1956

From the 1930s any British film that featured a race course would include Monolulu playing himself. Eventually he appeared in over ten films with his last appearance being in a Billy Fury vehicle called, fittingly, I’ve Gotta Horse.

On Valentine’s day in 1965 Jeffrey Bernard, who was working as a racing journalist at the time, visited an ill Monolulu in Middlesex hospital wanting an interview. Bernard had brought with him a box of Black Magic chocolates and offered the famous tipster a ‘strawberry cream’. Unfortunately, Monolulu started to fatally choke on the chocolate. Bernard backed out of the ward bidding farewell.

Monolulu lived for a lot of his life in Fitzrovia and there was once a pub named after him called Prince Monolulu at 28 Maple Street. Unfortunately a few years ago someone decided that a three-level cocktail bar called Potion was a much better idea.

Artists throughout centuries have often used mythical, historical or anthropological subjects as an excuse to portray the human nude, usually women of course. Carl Mydans – the Life magazine photographer – in rather an original way, used a WW2 Gas Decontamination centre in Westminster as his excuse. Great photos that they are.

As the inevitable war with Germany came closer, the British government was terrified with the thought of gas or chemical weapons being used. The horror of the First World War meant that most countries, including Britain and Germany, were signatories to the Geneva Gas Protocol of 1925 which banned the used of chemical and biological weapons (although not the stockpiling of them).

The huge distrust of a re-armed Germany, however, meant that gas decontamination centres were set up all over London before the war. Seven of them in Westminster alone. The centres were often built in swimming baths and the only one in the West End of London was at the Marshall Street Baths in Soho. In the end chemical weapons were left unused throughout the duration of the war. It was said that Hitler was briefly blinded by mustard gas in the First World War and for this reason he was reluctant to use them.

This was what all the fuss was about. A Canadian soldier from WW1 suffering from Mustard gas poisoning

The Marshall Street Baths, which are just about still there after they were closed down in 1997 by Westminster council, were built between 1928 and 1931. They were paid for by public funds for the general health and well-being of local people. The building consisted of a main pool lined with Sicilian marble and a ‘second class bath’ which measured 70ft by 30ft situated behind it. The whole complex had a child’s welfare centre, a public laundry and public bathing facilities.

When the baths were built a private tap or toilet was a luxury in Soho and private bathrooms were practically unheard of. Many Soho houses didn’t have electricity until well after the war and extraordinarily the last Soho house to convert from being gas-lit wasn’t until 1986.

Judith Summers in her book on Soho described children going for their weekly visit to the Marshall Street Hot Baths – a ritual that would have been the same for children all over the capital.

For many children this was not so much a chance to get clean as a social outing. Armed with their soap and towel, they would all set off together in a big gang, often at four o’clock on a Friday after school. Once inside, they would pay 2d or 3d for a Ladies or Gents Second Class bath. There were also First Class baths, which had the added luxury of providing the bather with a towel to stand on.

They waited on the old wooden benches until a bath was free and, after the attendant called out, ‘Next, please,’they would each go into a cubicle, while the woman set the small brass clock on the door and ran the bath from taps in the corridor outside. Her young customers were rarely satisfied with the temperature of the water, and their hackles still rise when they talk about her today.

Marshall Street baths was right in the middle of London’s theatre-land and was often used for rehearsals and training for any of the productions that used water. On November 4th 1934 the pantomime impresario Julian Wylie held auditions for a new huge production of Cinderella that was to be put on at Drury Lane theatre.

Auditions for Cinderella at Marshall Street Baths 9th November 1934

Julian Wylie, so as to professionally inspect the proposed chorus line, got as close to the edge as he dared. It was all to much though, and he died a few days later.

“It was a production worthy of Drury Lane. One of the scenes was a vast lake, into which marched an army of girls, entering the water and walking-down, down, down until they were entirely submerged and lost to sight beneath the surface of the lake. It was an exciting scene and provided some thrills at rehearsals too.”

Unfortunately, and after he had chosen all the chorus girls that were happy to get wet and just before the first performance of the pantomime, Wylie died. It was said, and I suppose there are worse ways of going, that he died as a result of an addiction to large quantities of ice-cream. I kid you not.

The programme for the Aquashow at Earls Court in 1948

In 1948 more rehearsals took place at the Marshall Street baths, this time for a massive production that was to be put on at Earls Court called the Aqua-show. It starred the erstwhile Tarzan and ex-Olympic swimmer Johnny Weismuller but also the 24 year old British Olympic ice-skater, dancer and actress called Belita. Born in Nether Wallop in Hampshire, her real name was Gladys Olive Jepson-Turner but known to everyone as ‘Belita – The Ice Maiden’

Johnny and Belita at Marshall Street. Weissmuller won five gold medals at the Olympics in 1924 and 1928, broke sixty seven world records and retired apparently never losing a race.

Although a trained ballet dancer, she took up professional ice-skating in America ostensibly for the money (probably on the advice of a very controlling mother). She was lured to Hollywood and appeared in several highly-profitable but low-budget films such as Suspense, Lady Let’s Dance and Silver Skates. She also became famous for her underwater swimming and performing in the first ever (and last?) underwater ballet.

Silver Skates released in 1943

Belita in Suspense released in 1946. The director asked to her perform this particular move twice. She refused.

Belita in Gene Kelly's Invitation To Dance, 1956

In the early 1950s there seemed to be a fashion for theatrical shows on ice and she became famous for her appearances in ice show spectaculars at the Empress Hall in London, starring with Max Wall, Norman Wisdom and Frankie Vaughan. She also had her own show, Champagne on Ice, put on at the London Hippodrome. After retiring, Belita died in the South of France in 2005.

photograph by David Warwick, 2005

photograph by David Warwick, 2005

In 1997 Westminster council decided to close down the historical Marshall Street baths for safety reasons. Originally they were going to demolish it completely but after being dissuaded, it is now due to be re-opened as part of a leisure centre, street-cleaning depot and an apartment block but with only the main pool remaining.

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